Abstract
The presented study is a contribution to the validation of sociomapping by evidence based on the results of testing. It deals with the effectiveness of interventions focused on increasing the mutual familiarity of team members, which has previously been proven by sociomapping.
A group of 23 students was separated into four groups by a systematic selection. It was determined what the initial mutual familiarity of the ingroup's members was (expressed by a seven-point verbally anchored scale) compared to the familiarity of the members of the outgroup.
In the beginning, there was no statistically significant difference between the familiarity of the ingroup and that of the outgroup. Subsequently, the teams were asked to spend an hour getting to know each other.
After two days, the students were again asked to evaluate the familiarity of their own team members as well as those of the outgroup. After the intervention, the familiarity of the ingroup changed by 1.91 (Cohen's d = 1.546), while the outgroup's familiarity did not change significantly.
There was a statistically significant difference (p < .001) in favor of the ingroup. The students were asked to repeat the evaluation again after 20 weeks.
It turned out that the effect of increased familiarity of the ingroup members persisted persisted even after such a long time (an increase by more than 1, compared to the baseline value, Cohen's d = 0.79). Meanwhile, however, the familiarity of the outgroup also changed by over 0.4 (Cohen's d = 0.28).
Therefore, the difference between the change in the ingroup's familiarity and that of the outgroup remained significant even after 20 weeks (p < .001).